Third Grade at the Mallasa Zoo
This past week, I asked my students to think of one word to perfectly describe each person in our third grade class. After 40 weeks of school together, I was excited to see what our activity would reveal. With clip charts at the ready, they huddled around our Character Traits poster and clutched Thesauruses.
We have a policy in our classroom: “No siesta words, only fiesta words!” Nice doesn’t tell us as much as compassionate, and cool doesn’t tell us as much as spontaneous. Later, as I read their fancy, fiesta word choices, I nodded in agreement at each one. Nico epitomizes the word feisty, Cris is without a doubt mysterious, and Natalia embodies the word diligent.
I agreed wholeheartedly, until I read their words for Miss Shipman. 12 students, 12 different words.
Here they are: artistic, joyful, beautiful, kind, helpful, sweet, sassy, generous, fabulous, loving, clever, fun.
And I thought to myself, “40 weeks together, over 6,000 hours spent in close proximity, and they still don’t know who I am? They think I’m fun?”
Because these are the 12 words I would have chosen: determined, quiet, careful, introverted, self-reliant, critical, judgmental, strong-willed, perfectionist, disciplined, competitive, independent.
It’s quite a phenomenon, to spend your days among little people. People without expectations of who you were, or who you will be. People who mistakenly call you “Mami” and wrap their arms around you when you’re least expecting it. People who don’t see the hours of painstaking lesson planning or grading, the monotony and routine. But they do see the moment you rushed to get a Band-Aid for their paper cut, or the moment you stopped to listen as they deciphered a new vocabulary word.
The truth is, my students do know who I am. But am I willing to accept the person that they see every day? Because it’s not really me; it’s Christ in me.
C.S. Lewis, an author my students have come to love dearly, puts it this way: “Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.” Mere Christianity
God isn’t a fix-it man. He didn’t come to this Earth to repair the broken places of our hearts and then pack His bags. He is an Architect. He came to restore us, all of us. And this kind of restoration is a full-time job. When He walks into our hearts, He intends to stay. And the longer He stays, the more we see something new being built inside of us.
So don’t refute what He wants to do in your life. Because when critical becomes kind, and judgmental becomes generous, save your contradictions. Let it serve as a reminder to be thankful for a work that we couldn’t manage on our own. Let the Palace-Builder have His way in you.
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The Upper Elementary (grades 2-5) themed our End of Year Program around the solar system! Every class performed a song about a different aspect of outer space. My third graders sang and danced to an awesome song called We Are the Planets. They worked so hard and did a fantastic job!
Upper Elementary Team
It's the eve of our last week of school! To those who have been praying for our 2013-2014 school year, you will never know how much your prayers have blessed these students. I WILL be returning to third grade for another school year at Highlands! Please continue praying for my transition to the States this summer and then back to La Paz at the end of July. Thank you, friends!
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